


The Break's Over

by Zafaria



Category: Wizard101
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-10 10:52:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14735594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zafaria/pseuds/Zafaria
Summary: Sad summer semester smites, secretly shown as silly sorcery stories





	The Break's Over

So it was summer.

It was hot, it was muggy, it was bright, and it was summer.

One could tell it was summer, because when all the students walked back into the classroom, a light layer of dust lifted from the seats. Each student had their assortment of tans, scrapes, and bruises from their well-spent two week vacation before classes began again.

Most of the classes strolled back into their classrooms triumphantly. The first person to walk in would reach their finger out and flick the light with an easy fashion. They’d look behind them at all the other students piling into the room, single-file. They’d sit, feet up on the desk, talking to one another and pointing at this cut or that mark. Murmurs and babble about one vacation were cut off by others telling of their fabulous retreat locations.

“Oh, I went back to Marleybone to visit some family, y’know. I was in our Chelsea penthouse for a good while just hangin’.”

“Oh! Really? I was only over in Kensington, we should’ve met up.”

“That’s great! I wasn’t in Marleybone but spent a good week between Polaris and then Mirage. What a dichotomy!”

Outside the Myth classroom, the story was very different. They crowded around the entrance, no one wanting to take responsibility for opening the door, turning on the lights, and re-immersing their peers in the boring drabble of Professor Drake. In the herd of students, the stench of anxiety was strong, sweat collecting on brows and seeping through the sleeves of yellow robes. Outside the dorms, on the notice board, Drake had posted a memo to his summer class:

_“You are expected to have covered through Chapter 3 of the “Monstrology in the Modern Age” textbook. You WILL be tested on this material immediately once we return from break._

_Regards,_

_Prof. Drake”_

The note made it’s appearance on the board, not even a week into the students’ vacations. By that time, some of the students already dispersed. Friends frantically scribbled notes and sent them off, crooked stamps and crushed corners, trying to find their vacationing peers’ post boxes. The conjurers that still at the school stayed sheltered in the dorms all two weeks. Outside the classroom, their bones ached from all the hours they spent on the hardwood floors, consuming the notes in exacting detail.

In the common areas, they would push the desks together in the mornings. There were open books, loose-leaf papers, large, multicolored packs of pens. A chalkboard at the front of the room showed complex, intangible schematics.

And there would be mugs of coffee and tea sitting towards the center of the table so that the cups weren’t knocked off the edge every time the students got up to make their additions to the chalkboard.

And once the tea was gone, and the chalkboard dusted over, they would take a five minute break. But only for five minutes, to prepare the room and their selves once more for studying. A sloppy sandwich of turkey and mustard and jam would be throw together, a student clasping it with the fruit preserves dribbling down their chin.They’d throw their arm over their mouth, swiping blackberries away with their sleeve. It would continue like this, for three days.

In front of the school now, awaiting their test, one girl with her newly dyed pink hair remarked. Her eyelids were drooping, some of the capillaries in her eyes leaking.

“Oh, for the love of Ymir! There’s not a single other school testing today they’re all going over the syllabus or whatever! I asked my friends, there is NO other school doing this right now!”

A student in the circle piped up.

“Yeah! Everyone else had a real break and we had to start studying not even three days after we got let out.” His sandy eyebrows were pushed together, angry, in protest. His face was a little red, the whites of his green eyes direct and piercing. In the circle, one of the other students nodded furiously, his small, peaked hat flopping off with the motion. He squatted down quickly and placed it back atop his shaved head. Quietly, towards the outside and the back, one student’s curly hair fell over their face as they dabbed the edge of their sleeve under their eyelids.

“I’d think we should compose something to Ambr-”

“No, no. He doesn’t care, he won’t deal with it. He’ll say ‘Well, you all had plenty of advance notice to begin your studying, there’s no excuse.” The boy said, pitching his voice and flapping his hand to mimic the headmaster. His eyes rolled up skyward and he bobbled his head back and forth between his shoulders.

“Would he curve it maybe? Maybe it won’t actually count?” Another student said, leaning themselves in. They spoke the questions softly, a meek suggestion.

“No, he isn’t like that. You know how he is… lecturing on and on and then testing us on garbage that’s not even-”

“Shhh! Shhh. He’s coming!” The heads in the group swiveled to the tunnel entering the school. They saw the tall, figure of Cyrus Drake sauntering towards them, stack of stapled papers cradled in his arms.

“Useless bald-headed-”

“Stop…” they whispered.

Without a word, a “good-morning” or “hello”, Cyrus went to the wooden double-doors and pressed his key in. He pushed open just the left door, and let it swing freely behind him, almost smacking a student in the face.

They sat, as if bound by contract, in their old seats from the semesters before. Once down, shaking hands ruffled through bookbags, searching for pens, pencils, erasers, rulers. They’d lay everything out on their desks, adjusting each item nervously until the exam was passed out.

Once the papers flopped on the desks, the students began pinching at the corners, waiting for their cues.

“You have 2 hours to complete this examination. I will give you ten- and five-minute warnings. Essays must be in pen. You may begin.”

The class peeled open the first page of the exam in hurried unison as soon as Cyrus said “may”.

In a few seconds of glossing over the first question, someone muttered “this is… just bogus”. The pages were filled with incomprehensible questions, long sentences that seemed so detailed, they lost meaning, and essay prompts with broad reach, followed by blank pages peering up at the concerned faces.

It was indeed bogus. While the kids in the Myth school fumed over the crinkled pages of the test, the other schools filled with laughs and echoes of loud, excited screeches. Storms and tiny fireballs would sparkle in the air, as the teachers conjured up some introductory spells to ease the classes back into the semester. The other rooms were devoid of the anxious clanks of metal pencil-tips smacking the desk. All the students sat upright or reclined in their seats; they didn’t hunch over their desks, backs severely curved and hoods hanging as low on their forehead as their angry browline.

Every conjurer taking the test would leave scribbles and explanations to the side of each multiple choice question, which Cyrus would only glance over, but never grade. They would write, paragraphs and pages, trying to explain their knowledge, that they tried to understand, but that they were at a loss for words, how to describe their reasoning. And while grading, Cyrus would see these lines and the absence of keywords he had desried, all the synonyms pulled and slapped on the papers in their place. He would sigh. After forty exams, and only two people getting passing marks he would think about curving it. Perhaps he really did make his test too hard.

Of course, the students would never tell him that.


End file.
